Syria: Air strikes hit embattled city of Aleppo

A barrel bomb killed 15 civilians in the Syrian city of Aleppo on Wednesday 8 July according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence across war-torn Syria.

Night-time video posted online is said to show the aftermath of the attack in the Karm al-Beik neighbourhood in the south-east of the city. The footage shows rescuers wearing head torches scouring through the rubble trying to find anyone wounded in the strike.

According to the observatory the dead included four children and two women.

Another video shows bulldozers and rescuers returning to the same scene on Thursday 9 July to continue looking through the rubble in the daylight.

The city is vitally important to the Syrian president, Bashar Al-Assad. Losing it would further entrench a de facto partition of Syria between western areas still governed from Damascus and the rest of the country run by militia groups.